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LAS VEGAS – Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to pay-per-view on Saturday with UFC 167, the company’s 20th anniversary show headlined by Canadian superstar Georges St-Pierre taking on Johny Hendricks for the welterweight title.

Prior to fight night, UFC owner-CEO Lorenzo Fertitta went 1-on-1 with Postmedia News MMA reporter Dave Deibert, discussing practical jokes in the office, drafting a dodgeball team and his performance skills away from the cage …

POSTMEDIA: If you were to create a dodgeball team for a game of 5-on-5, and you need to pick four teammates from the UFC roster, who do you choose?

FERTITTA: That’s an interesting question. I’m definitely looking for competitiveness and athleticism. If I had to draft right now I’d pick (former light heavyweight champion) Rashad (Evans), (light heavyweight champ) Jon Jones, (welterweight champion) GSP … Who would my fourth pick be? I would probably take (former middleweight champion) Anderson Silva and then I’d take (5-foot-4) Joseph Benavidez because he’s so small, nobody could probably hit him with the ball. He’d be like a little midget guy running around that they couldn’t hit.

POSTMEDIA: Is it true or an urban legend that you and brother Frank have, in a contract, an agreement to settle business disagreements in a jujitsu match refereed by president Dana White?

FERTITTA: It exists in the partnership agreement under the section ‘Dispute resolution.’

POSTMEDIA: So, along those lines, how old were you before you could finally beat up your older brother?

FERTITTA: I’m still not sure I could beat him up but it probably didn’t turn into a fair fight until I was probably in my early 20s. He’s seven years older and a little bit bigger. It took me some time to catch up.

POSTMEDIA: Your Twitter account is always loaded with tweets about the Bishop Gorman football team, where your sons have starred. Speaking of high school, which 1980s movie do you more relate to: Fast Times at Ridgemont High or The Breakfast Club?

FERTITTA: Fast Times, for sure (laughs). High school was such an interesting time. There was a lot of different things going on. Fast Times kind of captured that whole era of the 1980s, between the different subcultures that existed high school that we all experienced. And relative to Breakfast Club, I don’t want to sound like a prude or anything but I was never put on detention.

POSTMEDIA: I’ve heard plenty of stories about your big family Sunday get-togethers. If you’re in charge of the meal, what’s on the menu?

FERTITTA: It would be breakfast. That’s what I go with: eggs, bacon and pancakes.

POSTMEDIA: You’re always dressed meticulously. Who has more clothes in the closet: you or your wife?

FERTITTA: (Laughs) Probably me but just because I’m kind of a hoarder. I’m not very good at cleaning out my closet. She’s better at that.

POSTMEDIA: What did you do to impress her on your first date all those years ago?

FERTITTA: I’m not sure I actually impressed her but I took her to a western movie, called Silverado. The guy that was the lead role in that, I think she had a crush on, which was … I think it was Kevin Costner.

POSTMEDIA: What’s the best practical joke that you’ve played or that someone has played on you?

FERTITTA: Probably the craziest thing we’ve done, and still my favourite, is on our attorney at Station Casinos. There was a joke going around and we started calling him The Goat, for whatever reason. What we did was, one weekend we took the carpet out of his office and we sodded it with grass. We put four baby goats with bells on their necks in his office so when he came to work on Monday he had grass and goats in his office. They stayed in there for like two or three days. Eventually they started to smell so bad that I had to tell him that we had to get rid of them.

POSTMEDIA: You’re born and raised in Las Vegas. Best mob movie of all-time?

FERTITTA: Casino. To not say The Godfather is kind of stupid because it’s probably the greatest movie of all time. But trying to reach beyond that, over the years I’ve become a big fan of the movie Casino just because I think they did a pretty good job, an accurate job, of really bringing to life that decade and that genre of what was going in Las Vegas during the 1970s.

POSTMEDIA: UFC is in the midst of your broadcast deal with FOX. Which of the network’s other big shows would you do best on: So You Think You Can Dance or American Idol?

FERTITTA: Definitely dancing. I have no voice at all. I can’t sing. And I really can’t dance, either. But I could at least practice.

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High school felt like Fast Times for UFC boss Lorenzo Fertitta

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